The American military is using Chinese satellites

U.S. forces are so heavily saturated with different communication devices that if not transmitted by satellite would cause serious problems.

Data flow is so great that there are no adequate available satellites. The Pentagon has quietly hired a Chinese satellite, APSTAR-7, through which will flow communications with the army in Africa.

Information about buying Chinese satellite transfers arose at a meeting of one of the sub-committees of the U.S. Congress.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Space Policy Doug Loverro said that the Pentagon had paid 10 million dollars for a one-year contract with the Chinese.

The hired satellite was launched in March 2012 and placed in geostationary orbit, which means it is constantly hanging over one point of the earth, more specifically the equator.

Due to the embargo of military technology, it is ironic that the APSTAR-7 is used by he Americans, who are the leaders in the construction of satellites, but there is no satellite available from the USA.

The Pentagon hired a Chinese device to improve communication with the troops in Africa, because its own military satellites, and those already hired from other countries, lacked capacity. The capacity was only available from the Chinese, Mr Loverro said.

For a dce, the Pentagon has been forced to transfer military data by civilian satellites, because of the lack of capacity on the military satellites. There is no prospect of that changing in the future.

This immediately raised questions about the security of information transmitted over the APSTAR-7.

Mr Loverro said that the Chinese people will not have access to them due to the complex encryption and unspecified “additional security transfer.”

But not everyone is convinced by the Pentagon’s arguments.

“I’m amazed. The agreement was announced openly, so the Chinese can not have doubts about who is using their satellites. They will probably save a copy of all the data,” said Dan Cheng, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

In his view, from past experience, the Chinese will certainly try to bite through security. Even if they do not break the code, the data has been handed to them, and will serve as valuable learning material.